I confirm the problem. Public transit directions used to be working well in Vienna, Austria, and were very useful, as no other online tool or available printed timetable listing gathers and correlates all this information in one place. This looks like it has been deliberately turned off. Please restore it.

Now, when I try to get public transit directions, I get the following error message: "Your search for transit directions from ... to ... appears to be outside our current coverage area. Please consult our list of participating public transit agencies."

However, when I zoom on the map and check the bus, tram and ubahn stop icons, all the information is there.

Google apologises that Austrian transit data from OeBB is no longer available on Google Maps. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause to commuters, and are working hard to provide this service again in the future. For information on public transportation in Austria, visit http://www.oebb.at/pv/de/Servicebox/Fahrplanabfrage/index.jsp

Google Maps Public transit, was one of the best Google Produkts that there was. I hope this will be restored soon, since it really worked and told you how long you would really take including waking etc. It's ashame how hard it is now, to travel with public transport!

Please bring back!!!!!! Everyone is very sad about it disappearing. It was so great to use with the iphone.This is better than the VOR site in terms of including walking, biking, transit routesanachb.at

I support MrImage's idea to ask Wiener Linien and would also try other local transport providers for Urban Areas (Graz, Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck....) ÖBB is well known for its inflexible and backward policies, it doesn't surprise me that they act like this.

It would be unquestionable nice to have accurate public transportation schedules incorporated in plotted routes. Yet if those are not available for whatever reason I believe that having the routes itself would be a tremendous help anyway.

Knowing at least which tram, subway or bus lines you have to take to get somewhere would be already 90% satisfactory IMHO.

I also emailed them, well. I think this must be made public. Does anybody have contacts with the press? Withholding access to data of public interest to create a state monopoly to push sales on an iphone application is really not the 21st century of information technology :(

It's over a year since the last google official stated that google's "working hard to provide this service [public transportation directions] again in the future".
I did some research and relying on a derstandard.at article from june, 16th 2010 at least the winier linien seem to be willing to cooperate with google in order to provide the data again. Quote: "Obwohl wir als Verkehrsunternehmen nicht die Funktionalität von Google Maps garantieren können und dies auch nicht in unseren Aufgabenbereich fällt, arbeiten wir mit diesem Unternehmen und dem VOR (Verkehrsverbund Ost-Region) an einer Lösung" and "Bei dieser Gelegenheit wollen wir auch darauf hinweisen, dass von Seiten der Wiener Linien keine Daten zurückgehalten werden" official statement of winier linien to a request by derstandard.at. source: http://goo.gl/zzWaF.
Base line translated: though it's not their [wiener linien] business to maintain google maps full functionality they're still working on a solution. and furthermore: they're [wiener linien] not keeping the data away from the public [google].

So google, what's going on? As it seems you could get access to at least the wiener linien data for vienna. But you don't care? And that's really the definition of "working hard" on something?
I didn't think so.